The way lifehacker provides the ability to stay current on lots of general topics, including software and gadgets, is there a site out there that can act as a one-stop source for what is going on in the software technology world. And I don't mean to ask for a tech news site telling about the major technological decisions or products from a marketing POV. But a site that is relevant to a programmer and provides direct information about the programming world, open-source included. And I am looking for a consolidated source similar to lifehacker.

Since this is more of an opinion based question than a direct one, I am posting it as a community wiki. Please correct me if I am wrong.

@Prashant,i disagree.There are people here who answer esoteric langage questions and guess what f#'s all questions are answered.see the link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/f%23 .By any means f# is newer for many lesser mortals like me and many (no offence).

@Sri - Exactly my point. On SO, you need to know what you are looking for, and then you can find it. If you go to lifehacker.com, you will see what I mean. I am looking for something that allows me to stay current on a day to day basis. Something like a news site, but more programmer oriented than, for example, architect oriented. (none taken)

I listen to a few podcasts, read a lot of RSS feeds. I usually end up getting my news on gadgets from engadget, programming news from either here or programming.reddit.com. Also some fine programmers on twitter.

I've been in the business for 40 years. I read constantly. Mostly I stick to high-end technical journals and conference proceedings (ACM Communications of the ACM, Transactions on Software Engineering, Transcations on Programming Languages and Systems, SIGPLAN and SIGOPs proceedings, IEEE Computer/Software/Micro....).

I find that newsgroups have interesting threads. Wikipedia is starting to have lots of good information on topics.

But I don't learn much from websites.

I have a very hard time keeping up, but about half of that is because marketing guys keep inventing new buzzwords for old ideas. ("Model driven architecture" === fancy new term for "Specification"). The other half of the problem is real: people build more complex systems and face more complex issues.

Keep working on new, difficult, and interesting problems. Technology is a solution to a problem, not an end in itself. Difficult problems can be aided by good technologies, and you'll naturally pick up, learn, and apply new things that make things easier for you.

Just trying to stay "current" .. there's a million technologies that you don't need, will never use, and will get obsolete before you use them. You don't need to know everything.

The SlashDot rss feed keeps me up to date on most things geek. (Not directly programming related most the time, but always relevant.) It's a better source for tech news specifically than Lifehacker, though Lifehacker does have nice pieces every now and then.